Many of us face inertia from time to time. There is that important project that we never seem to get around to starting. Or the exercise program we just can’t seem to initiate, despite our best intentions.

The law of inertia states that something will only change its present state (which, in the above examples, is the state of non-activity) unless acted on by some sort of force. Once something starts moving, it tends to keep moving.

So it stands to reason that if we can simply get started, the law of inertia should keep us moving in the right direction. And getting started is oh so much easier than tackling an entire project.

The first step can be as small as booking a meeting or reviewing your old research notes or making a list of everything that needs to be done.

However, for some of us, perfectionism or an ‘all or nothing’ attitude really immobilizes us. We convince our self that if we can’t do something completely or perfectly, it’s not worth it to even start. I couldn’t disagree more.

First of all, once we get started on something, it’s easier to keep going. (Take that inertia!)

Secondly, not everything needs to be done perfectly. In fact, if we waited for perfection, very few things would ever get off the ground.

As a consultant, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the biggest companies out there. Despite their market success, it never ceases to amaze me how some things within the companies are pretty far from perfect (to put it nicely).

And so, in the spirit of overcoming inertia, we at Clear Concept are launching our new website. We are very excited to be making several tools and resources available to our clients. Download tools, take a self-assessment, learn about productivity studies, and read the latest productivity articles. Stay tuned for even more. The website sure ain’t perfect yet, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Easier said than done …
Being ‘proactive’ all the time is a tough gig. Managers get pulled at from so many different directions. On the one hand, you’re a doer and on the other hand, you’re a facilitator. It is arguably one of the toughest jobs out there.

Sink or swim…
Often, people are promoted to a manager role because they are really good at being a doer. But we all know that it takes a much wider skill set to excel as a manager.

I recently started working with a group of highly skilled business professionals called the Performance Optimization Group. Together, we came up with some guidelines to make a tough job a little bit easier.

The 4 P’s

1. Principles:
   Proactive Managers clearly understand their core principles, and refer back to these principles to drive every decision and action. They consider others’ perspectives and accept problems. They also model a balanced life.
2. Personal Productivity:
   Personal productivity is critical to early and ongoing success of any manager. Proactive Managers have solid systems in place to manage their information, their time and their priorities.
3. Process:
   Managing work is a process. It starts with a comprehensive intake, followed by interim reviews and ends with balanced, two-way feedback. Proactive Managers value and fulfil their important role in each of these steps.
4. People:
   A proactive Manager is intentional about establishing relationships. They continually assess engagement and address gaps through a variety of strategies, including standards and expectation setting.

A Simple Framework…
Of course, there is much more that could be said on the topic of management. But sometimes having a simple framework like this can be a really powerful way to direct our on-going learning.

Yes, we all need to be available to our colleagues, but sometimes our willingness to help others comes at the expense of helping ourselves.  If I had a dollar for every time someone told me “I need to say no more often” I would be one wealthy individual. 

Some people can naturally say no.  The rest of us need to have a few other tricks up our sleeve.  Read on for some of the best ways to say no without using that oh-so-hard to vocalize word.

1.       Know your plan

Plan what you need to accomplish and when you plan to do it.  Obviously, you need to leave some time open for the unknown.  Once you have a plan, it becomes much clearer for you to evaluate whether you have time to help someone else.

2.       Say “Yes” instead of “No”

Consider what you can do to help your colleague.  It might be relatively easy for you to do part of what they are requesting. 

Example: “If you need help writing a press release, I suggest that you talk to John in Marketing.  He has an intern working with him right now and they may even be able to write it for you.  I’ll send an email to John for you.”

3.       Don’t offer up your prime time

Your involvement may be mitigated if your availability is in ‘off-prime’ hours (i.e., before 8am; after 5pm; during an evening call).  Your colleague may be more inclined to keep the conversation ‘tight’. 

Example: “I’m pretty booked today, but I could go over it with you at 5:30pm.”

4.       Who’s Got the Monkey?

I am a fan of this Harvard Business Review article that advises us to avoid taking on problems as our own.  You alone do not need to solve everything. 

Example:  “Have you tried …” (instead of “Let me try …”)

5.       Cite Your Current Workload

Be honest.  Let the person know that you would like to help them but you are fully booked until [insert date that works for you].     

Example: “I’m pretty busy until the end of January.  Can this wait until early February?”

So there you have it.  My (up until now) secret tips for getting out of work.  Just please don’t get offended if I use these lines on you.  Remember – I’m trying to role model productive working.

Christmas, Hanukkah, Muharram or Kwanza … while they are all joyful observances, they can be associated with their share of stress.  Not to mention the mounting pressure to get a lot of things done. 

Here are our TOP THREE productivity tips to get you through the holiday season with that ho-ho-ho spirit:

1.        Less is more.

Don’t over commit yourself. 

• Work: Be selective about the meeting invitations you accept.  We often have more choice than we believe we do.  Also, acknowledging that this is a very busy time of year, being tightly focused on your absolute top priorities is now more important than ever.  (Focusing on your top priorities also means limiting the time you dedicate to other, less critical, tasks.)
• Socially: Be selective about the social functions you attend – you don’t need to be at everything.  
• Gift exchanges: Despite the fact that gifts are part of the holiday process – less is still more.  You don’t need to ‘shop till you drop’.  Organize your shopping list, limit your trips to the mall and set a shopping deadline (well ahead of the actual gift exchange date). 

2.       Get Organized and Stay Organized

Operating with a To Do List throughout the year is absolutely critical and the holidays are no exception.  Make sure your To Do list captures 100% of your action items. 

Schedule times to get things done (project wrap-up, holiday cards, etc.).  Don’t assume that you’ll ‘find time’ or ‘squeeze things in’ at this time of year.  Based on personal experience, I can guarantee that this is a sure-fire way to add stress to what is supposed to be a festive months.

3.       Take Time to Truly Enjoy the Holidays

This suggestion is the most critical one.  Embrace your time off.  Spend a good amount of quality time with your family.  Let bygones be bygones (even with those family members who know just how to strike your last holiday nerve.)  Focus on some good ol’ rest & relaxation so you can start 2010 more refreshed, focused and productive. 

With all of these tips, you’ll be sure to turn ‘Bah Humbug’ into ‘Happy Holidays’ in no time.

But, how many times have you said to yourself: “I wish I had just taken the five minutes to do …”? Hindsight is always 20/20, and there are many times when a few extra minutes upfront would have saved time ‘fixing’ things down the road.

The Bad and the Ugly
You may have noticed in our last e-newsletter subject line that there was a spelling mistake (Writing Things Down ). Some of you ignored it and some kindly wrote to say that there was a typo.

The discussion in the office was whether we should call attention to our mistake or sweep it under the rug. It’s been a month since the last newsletter, so who would remember – seriously? But then the idea sprung that it might be helpful to use this as a teachable moment. (For those of you wondering, this ‘teacher’ is sometimes the first person who needs the lesson!)

As professionals, we tend to follow a process when we are trying to achieve something. When we skip steps in this process, we run the risk of costing ourselves more time in the end. Here at Clear Concept, we skipped the final e-newsletter review that would have clearly [read: hopefully] caught our typo.

The Good
There are certain times when we should take the time to complete each step in the process. Examples include:

• Making sure that a direct report clearly understands the new task assigned
• Holding a mid-project review session
• Providing feedback to a colleague
• Calling a client who had a not-so-good experience with a product
• Proofing an email to make sure the content is clear and the correct ‘To’ people are listed

As we all know, taking a few good extra minutes at times like these can help avoid the bad and the ugly.

Turns out, despite how many times the above study is referenced, it appears to be mere folklore.  But, other studies are validating there appears to be some truth in this urban myth after all.

One study was based on 149 participants from 6 countries.  Those who wrote down their goals accomplished more than those who did not write down their goals.  To top it off, the differences were significant.  (Academics love the word significant.)  And those who shared their goals with others accomplished even more.

Why Does ‘Writing it Down’ Have an Impact?

Writing things down does several things, including:

•  Makes your goals more concrete and specific
•  Encourages you to filter out your most critical tasks
•  Adds the reinforcement that is often necessary to turn a goal into a reality
•  Creates a formal mechanism for you to share your goals with others

 Applying This Lesson

If you’re not already doing so, there are several things you can do starting today:

1)      Write down your plan for each day.  Do this the night before so you are primed to sink into a meaty project as soon as you get back to work the next day.

2)      Maintain one central TO DO list.  Don’t rely on your memory.  Write everything down.

3)      Create project plans for bigger chunks of work (i.e., 5 hours or more).  Define the key activities and timeline.

4)      Communicate your plan with other people.  This added accountability will bring you one step closer to achieving each of your goals.

5)      Ask your team members to write down their goals.  Together, refer back to these goals periodically to reinforce accountability and measure progress.

 Make it Happen

Lee Iaccoca once said: “The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.”

We know that the best way to reinforce a lesson is to apply it.  When it comes to writing down your goals, take some inspiration from Nike: Just Do It.

It happens to ALL of us.  There are certain times in our life when days like this are inevitable:

• day after returning from vacation
• Right before a big presentation
• The day after closing a big deal
• Right before a big company event
• During extensive travel

What can we do to create more realistic expectations? dpopdkdsplfk;l,sdmf;svhat can we do to create more realistic expectations on days like these?

It’s all about getting back to basics: planning your priorities, scheduling your time and setting realistic expectations.  We can all use reminders of these basic principles.  That includes me – especially after a day like Tuesday. 

Apparently, 11% of us use social networks and I expect that number to grow rapidly.  As social media becomes more prevalent, it makes sense for us to develop a strategy on how to manage this time.

People often ask me how much time they should be spending on these social sites.  Like any good consultant, I answer them in a very specific way: “It depends.”

It depends on 3 Simple Things.

1. What are your goals for each site:

Clearly, we use different social media sites for different reasons. Our goals may include one or more of the following:

• Connecting with friends and colleagues
• Having some laughs 
• Promoting our business
• Developing new business
• Learning something new
• Networking

2.  How do these goals compare to other goals?

Let’s say that your primary goal with social media is to develop new business. You may have several other activities focused on the same goal: meeting people for coffee/lunch, preparing for a presentation, attending networking events, etc. 

It’s important to have a sense of how these different activities contribute to our ultimate goal.  I know one professional that attributes 50% of the business she generated last year to people she re-connected with on LinkedIn.  Impressive.  Clearly, spending time on LinkedIn is worthwhile for her.

But the other 50% of her business was generated through other activities – activites that also need her time and attention.

3. How much time do you have?

As much as I’ve tried to challenge this fact, we only have 24 hours to work with each day.   Social media sites are just one thing we’re trying to fit into our busy days.  

I encourage people to determine how much time they want to dedicate to each of their key priorities.  Building on the example above, let’s say that we’ve allocated approximately five hours per week to business development.  And perhaps of that time, we decide that it makes sense to dedicate about one hour per week to social media.  This gives us about 10 minutes per day.  Wow – doesn’t sound like much when we break it down, does it? 

4. What is your ROI?

We can always add more time, but it takes away from something else.  As busy people, we always need to ask ourselves whether the trade-off is in our best interest.

Professionals are constantly asking themselves what the ROI (return on investment) is for financial investments.  The same should apply to ‘time’ investments.

 When we find ourselves spending a great deal of time on something – like social media sites – it’s important to periodically assess whether we’re satisfied with our ROI.  This should help to tell us when enough is enough. 

It’s hard to think of ourselves as being a bottleneck.  There’s no doubt that we’re working hard on not being one. But in what ways do our work habits create delays for our colleagues? 

There is a chance that we are a bottleneck if:

• People have to follow-up with us repeatedly
• We have a backlog of people that we need to follow-up with
• Our feedback or input always seems to come during crunch times right before a deadline

When we put off responding to a request, it may be costing us (and our colleagues) more than we think.  Bottlenecks lead to:

• Lost time – Our team members can spend wasted time spinning their wheels, tracking us down and re-doing work that could have been corrected at an earlier stage
• Missed opportunities  – We lose the ability to follow-up on key things
• Added stress – Putting things off often results in getting crunched against a deadline which is stressful for everyone involved.

Our First Priority

Despite all of the other work on our plate, I recommend prioritizing requests from other people. 

We often do so if a request comes from our manager or a key client. But what about when the request comes from a peer or a direct report? These people can be just as reliant on our input.

What, specifically, can we do?

There are several important things that we can do like:

• Answer meeting requests as soon as possible
• Review someone’s work at our earliest time possible
• Make ourselves readily available for team members so we can help keep projects moving along

 At the end of the day, if a request is worthwhile responding to, it makes sense to do so sooner rather than later.  With this attitude, we’ll reduce bottlenecks and improve productivity.  

That comment has stuck with me.  And now, after years of practice and fine-tuning, I hear myself telling my clients: “It’s all about the systems”.  [Hmm … Life has a way of coming full-circle, doesn’t it?]

What do I mean by systems?

A system is a routine way of handling something.

Generally, systems work best around the simple, routine tasks that consume so much of our day (regardless of how senior we are).  In my experience, most people would become much more productive if they tightened up their systems. Many things benefit from a standardized system including:

• Email
• Delegating tasks
• Action items, deadlines, commitments
• Contacts
• Project files

Why do we need systems?

Our lives are complicated enough with the sheer volume and demands on our time. The last thing we need is chaos among all of our routine, simple tasks.  Systems have many advantages:

1. Systems simplify our lives. 
2. Systems make us more efficient and free up more time for strategic activities.
3. Systems help to minimize stress and last minute emergencies.

All in all, systems are pretty enticing.  If I could bottle and sell “systems”, I’d be a rich lady…

How do you know when you need a system?

One of my favourite clients, Erica Ehm, recently asked me how she would know when she needs a system.  My general rule: when something is more difficult than it needs to be.  In other words, we need a new system if:

• We feel as though something is slipping through the cracks
• It takes too long to find key information
• A task introduces unnecessary stress into the workday
• We notice that others are compensating for our lack of systems

 Do any of these conditions sound familiar to you?  If so, it sounds like you could benefit from a new system.